Doyer, Assuerus (1758-1838)

Assuerus Doyer, the son of Antoni Doyer and Tanneken Schimmelpenning, was born 13 December 1758 at Zwolle. He studied at the Mennonite seminary in Amsterdam 1778-1783, then at the university of Halle, taking his doctor's degree under Prof. Wolff. After a period in Zwolle he studied under Prof. Gerrit Hesselink at Amsterdam. In 1787 he was called to Kleve as pastor and in the following year to Krefeld. In 1793 he resigned and lived with his father-in-law Matthijs van Maurik on a small estate near Zwolle. In 1794 the Zwolle congregation asked him to assist their sick pastor Thomas Menalda and in 1799 he became Menalda's successor. In 1833 he sought to retire, but the church gave him an assistant, Lambertus ten Cate Coster, with whom he worked until 1836. He was an opponent of religious liberalism, which was prevalent at that time in Holland, and maintained active contact with the revival movement known as the Reveil. He died on 21 March 1838, trusting, as he confessed, not in the perishable good that he had done, but in the mercy of his Saviour and Redeemer.